Contrarian Boston/03.03.2024

Healey takes aim at a NIMBY travesty in the suburbs | Contrarian Boston draws media critic’s attention | Local media, politicos playing catch-up on Steward hospital crisis | Watertown dead last for T service |

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Caught napping? Mass. politicos and local media well behind the curve when it comes to the meltdown of for-profit hospital chain Steward

The financial shenanigans and corporate suite greed at the made-in-Massachusetts health care giant have finally grabbed the attention of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.

But as they pledge investigations, the deans of the Massachusetts congressional delegation may first want to check in with Sen. Charles Grassley.

Back in December, the Iowa Republican teamed up with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, to launch their own investigation of Steward’s main financial backer.

The local media hasn’t been much more on the ball. Sure, Brian McGrory, the former Globe editor who now writes an occasional column for his old employer, showered some well-deserved ridicule on Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre, he of the $40 million yacht and luxury corporate jets.

Props also to Larry Edelman, the Globe’s financial columnist, and Jessica Bartlett, the paper’s medical reporter, both of whom have done great work over the past month digging into issues at the health care chain, which was launched in Massachusetts and has nine hospitals across the state.

But here’s the thing: The American Prospect had previously reported on Steward CEO’s yacht in a piece that delved into Medical Properties Trust, a real estate investment firm that played a crucial role both in the hospital company’s nationwide expansion and now its unraveling.

And when did the story run? Try last June.

And let’s not forget Gov. Maura Healey. Sure, she’s only been in office for a year. But she was the state attorney general for eight years before that, including in 2016 when Steward sold off all the buildings at its Massachusetts hospitals to the aforementioned MPT.

Now Steward can’t afford to pay the tens of millions in rent it owes its landlord, Medical Properties Trust, and has stopped work completely on the reconstruction of Norwood Hospital, which shut its doors in 2020 after a devastating flood.

Norwood Hospital, where Steward has halted work on the rebuilding of the key health care institution/photo by Contrarian Boston

“Erstwhile Boston media darling Steward Health Care has been strip-mining hospitals for a decade now,” The American Prospect noted in late January, a few days after the Globe ran its first big piece on the hospital system’s financial crisis. “The power elite may finally be paying attention.”

Yet long before the Globe finally began paying attention, the mess at Steward had already morphed from a crisis to a catastrophe, endangering nine hospitals that serve mostly blue collar and low-income cities and communities, from the Carney in Dorchester to Holy Family in Haverhill.

Why did it take so long for Greater Boston’s political and media elite to wake up and smell the coffee?

Well, the collapse of local newspapers certainly hasn’t helped. There are few if any reporters left keeping an eye on important local institutions like the many hospitals Steward owns in cities like Norwood, Brockton and Fall River.

It also doesn’t help that the Globe, the region’s dominant media institution, has no real competition left, with the Boston Herald slowly withering into irrelevance under owner Alden Capital, another investment firm with a questionable track record.

Why care about media competition? For most reporters, the fear of getting scooped can be a great motivator to get moving on a story, rather than waiting until it blows up.

Goodbye NIMBY housing cap at Devens? Governor proposes jettisoning a decades-old rule that has severely limited the number of apartments and homes that can be built at the old army base

Well, it’s about time.

Tucked into the multibillion-dollar economic development bill that Gov. Maura Healey filed on Friday is a provision that could open the door to desperately needed new housing in Boston’s outer suburbs.

A more than three-decades old cap, which limits the development of new housing at Devens to just 282 units at a former base that once was home to thousands of servicemen and women, would be eliminated under the Healey administration proposal, the Harvard Press reports.

Proposals to transform the old Vicksburg Square barracks at Devens into apartments have failed amid fierce opposition from local communities

Local officials in neighboring towns, especially Harvard and Ayer, have used the cap to block any large-scale housing development at Devens, even as rents and home prices have gone through the roof.